Social Security Bulletin - Vol. 63 - No. 3 - 2000 - page 47

Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and linked administrative
records, we explore differences in old-age benefits between men and women
attributable to differences in length of work life and pay. We find that
most women are fully insured for Social Security purposes, but those who are
not would have to work substantially more to become eligible. Among those
who are eligible, additional work would translate into only slightly higher
benefits.

Support for this research was provided by the Pension Research Council at
the Wharton School and the School of Economics, University of New South Wales
(Mitchell), the National Institute on Aging through an award to the Population
Aging Research Center (Mitchell and Phillips), and Wellesley College (Levine).
Opinions are those of the authors and not of the institutions with which the
authors are affiliated. This research is part of the National Bureau of Economic
Research's programs on Aging and Public Economics.

*Philip B. Levine is with the Department of Economics, Wellesley College.
Olivia S. Mitchell is with the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
John W.R. Phillips is with SSNs Office of Policy. (Manuscript received
January 2000; accepted for publication August 2000.)

A Benefit of One's Own:
Older Women's Entitlement to Social Security Retirement

by Philip B. Levine, Olivia S. Mitchell, and John W.R. Phillips*

Summary

This article explores differences in Social Security eligibility and benefit
levels for older men and women using survey data from the Health and Retirement
Study combined with administrative records on actual work histories and Social
Security rules. We are able to determine the fully insured status of those
persons, how close they are to meeting eligibility criteria when they are
not fully insured, and their prospects for benefits.

Around three-quarters of older women nearing retirement today will be fully
insured for Social Security old-age benefits on the basis of their own accounts,
but the rest would need substantial extra employment to rise above the eligibility
threshold. Further, two-thirds of older married women who are fully insured
have sufficient lifetime earnings to translate into an age-65 primary insurance
amount worth at least half their husband's, but the other one-third can expect
no additional retirement benefit from contributing to Social Security late
in life. Finally, most wives will not be able to improve their benefits by
working more under current rules.

These results have mixed implications regarding the potential impact of women's
rising labor force attachment on eventual retirement benefits. Working more
years could increase women's chances of becoming eligible for Social Security
benefits, but that effect is likely to be small. Furthermore, even when women
do become fully insured according to the rules, not many wives will receive
a higher benefit at the margin. The reason is that married women still receive
higher Social Security benefits as a spouse than they do on the basis of their
own work record. In fact, the net benefit from Social Security due to additional
work is negative once one takes into account the Social Security contributions
the women paid while employed. Benefits paid to widows are even more likely
to be based on the spouse's work history rather than on the woman's. Hence,
the rising labor market attachment of women in the future may increase their
eligibility for benefits but will produce only modest (and often negative)
impacts on their old-age Social Security benefits under current rules.

Introduction

Some charge that the Social Security system treats men and women inequitably
(GAO 1997; Briceland-Betts 1997), while others contend that older women are
"Social Security's number-one beneficiaries" (Smeeding, Estes, and
Glasse, no date). The rules governing Social Security eligibility and benefit
amounts are sex-neutral, but in practice men are more likely to be eligible
for benefits (because of their longer work histories) and entitled to higher
benefits (because of their higher lifetime earnings). Work-life differences
also play a role in marital benefits under the program: husbands are more
likely than wives to qualify for their own benefit and, therefore, to receive
that benefit rather than a spousal benefit; and among nonmarried persons,
differences in average pay levels and years of work account for virtually
all of the gap between men and women in Social Security benefits (Levine,
Mitchell, and Phillips 1999).

This study analyzes whether longer periods of work and rising levels of pay
for women might shrink those differences in the future. This topic is worthy
of economic analysis because the complexity of the Social Security program's
eligibility and benefit rules makes it difficult to predict how changes in
the labor market might influence future benefit patterns for aging Americans.
Previous analyses explored the effect of changes in average differences in
work histories on future Social Security benefits. However, little is known
about the effect of distributional differences in work histories. The present
study extends the literature in that direction.

This article:

Reviews
briefly the key features of Social Security affecting eligibility and benefit
levels,

Documents differences in eligibility and average projected
Social Security benefits between men and women, along with the work and
pay differentials contributing to the gap, and

Examines
distributional differences in labor market behavior that may portend more
equal benefit amounts for men and women.

Social Security Eligibility and Benefit Rules

To receive Social Security benefits in the United States, one must first
meet specific eligibility criteria requiring a degree of labor market attachment.[n1]
For retirement benefits, the individual must be fully insured under the program,
meaning that the person has amassed at least 40 quarters of coverage (QCs).[n2]
QCs are awarded on the basis of having received covered earnings of
at least some threshold amount each year. Covered earnings are pay from jobs
included under the Social Security system, with a cap on the maximum level
of pay counted for program purposes ($80,400 in 2001).

Determining the monthly benefit for a retiring worker who is fully insured
requires evaluating that worker's average indexed monthly earnings (AIME)
and primary insurance amount (PIA). Those benefit and eligibility rules apply
to all retiring workers and, as such, appear to be sex-neutral. AIME is computed
by taking the worker's annual indexed earnings, dropping the 5 lowest years,
and averaging the earnings over the remaining years.[n3]
The PIA formula then applies a progressive replacement-rate formula to indexed
earnings.[n4] Finally, the retiree's monthly benefit amount
will depend on his or her retirement age. If he or she has attained the so-called
normal retirement age (NRA), the benefit is set equal to the PIA. If the
retiree is younger than the NRA, the benefit is reduced by 5/9 of a percent
per month below that age. The NRA was age 65 for people retiring in the early
1990s, so someone retiring at the early entitlement age (EEA) of 62 would
receive only 80 percent of the full PIA for the remainder of his or her life.
Both early and normal retirement benefits are indexed to the consumer price
index.

In addition, a married worker's spouse may also be entitled to Social Security
benefits based on his or her partner's employment history. As an example,
consider a married couple, both of whom turned 65 in 1990. When the husband
files for benefits as a fully insured retiree, his wife may not have sufficient
QCs to receive a benefit on her own. Nevertheless, she would be entitled
to receive a spousal benefit equal to half of her husband's PIA.[n5]
If the wife had accumulated 40 QCs, she would then be dually entitled. Persons
who are dually entitled receive either their own retirement benefit or their
benefit as a spouse, whichever is larger.

As demonstrated below, many older women fall short of being fully insured
on the basis of their own earnings record. Even for a woman who is eligible
in her own right, however, the benefit she would receive based on her own
employment history may be less than her spousal benefit.[n6] Both entitlement and benefit
levels may change over time, as women's lifetime labor market attachment rises.
Persons who never married are not entitled to spousal benefits, but the dual
entitlement rules apply to divorced persons as long as the marriage to a covered
worker lasted a minimum of 10 years.

Regardless of the wife's own insured status, she is eligible for survivor
benefits when her (fully insured) spouse dies. The widow of a fully insured
worker is first eligible to claim benefits at age 60. Survivor beneficiaries
receive a benefit equal to 71.5 percent of the deceased worker's PIA at age
60, rising to 100 percent at age 65.[n7] It is possible
and often likely that a woman who claims a spousal benefit will eventually
receive a benefit as a widow.

From this description of the eligibility and benefit formulas under Social
Security, it should be clear that the program rules have potentially important
"notches" or discontinuities. For instance, the requirement of
40 quarters of coverage for retirement benefits could mean that just one additional
year of work (or marriage) could move a woman from ineligible to eligible
status. For those who are fully insured, additional work might change benefit
levels in important ways at the margin. The next section explores the extent
to which real-world work and pay histories interact with the eligibility and
benefit rules.

What Men and Women on the Verge of Retirement Can Expect from Social Security

In order to assess how Social Security rules interact with actual earnings
and work trajectories, we use a uniquely valuable database known as the Health
and Retirement Study (HRS). That data collection effort was initiated in
1992 by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research with funding
from the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration,
among other supporters. The survey gathered extensive and very detailed demographic,
health, wealth, income, and family structure data on a nationally representative
sample of people between the ages of 51 and 61 and their spouses (regardless
of age). With respondents' permission, the household files may be linked
for research purposes with administrative records on covered earnings and
employment histories.[n8] No other current data source has
equivalently rich and detailed linked administrative records for this cohort.[n9]

The linked earnings and employment histories are used in the present study
to generate eligibility and prospective Social Security benefits for 5,878
age-eligible HRS respondents and their spouses, as relevant. We also develop
two indicators to capture patterns in respondents' lifetime employment and
earnings.[n10] One is prime-age earnings, defined as average
annual earnings between the ages of 21 and 50 based on reported pay up to
the Social Security earnings ceiling. We hypothesize that people with higher
prime-age earnings would anticipate higher retirement benefits because of
the way in which pay translates into Social Security benefits. A second indicator
of labor market attachment is the number of years of Social Security-covered
employment a worker has up to the time he or she turns age 50. That measure
is invaluable in assessing how another year of work translates into additional
Social Security income. The remaining information on respondents' characteristics
is available directly from the HRS survey respondents who supplied extensive
information on the key economic and demographic attributes of household members.

The richness of the data set is evident from the summary measures of labor
market attachment and earnings reported in Table 1.[n11]
Using Social Security program rules, we determine which respondents are fully
insured, the ages at which they became fully insured, their annual earnings,
and their primary insurance amounts. Statistics for all men are grouped together,
because most are insured for Social Security purposes at a young age. By
contrast, for women, we distinguish those who are fully insured at the time
of the HRS survey from those who are not. In some cases, we also consider
married individuals separately from those who are not married; we do that
to focus attention on the importance of women's own work records versus those
of their spouses from the perspective of retirement benefits.[n12]

Work history patterns depicted in Table 1 indicate that men on the verge
of retirement in 1992 worked virtually all of their prime-age years. The
median male acquired 125 to 134 QCs during that time and became fully insured
around age 30. Married men had indexed annual earnings during their prime-age
years that averaged about $27,200, compared with about $21,400 for nonmarried
men. If those men continued to work until age 65 and their earnings followed
the same trajectory as before 1992, they would be entitled to monthly Social
Security benefits of $972 (married) and $826 (nonmarried).[n13] Virtually all married male respondents could
qualify for benefits on their own record and would not receive a spousal benefit
since their own benefit was higher.

Women's work patterns were markedly different and varied by marital status
(see Table 1). For example, the work histories of nonmarried women more closely
resemble those of men than of married women, but nonmarried women still had
5 fewer years of work and 42 fewer QCs than nonmarried men. The evidence
also shows that only three-quarters of women on the verge of retirement were
fully insured for Social Security on the basis of their own work history.

Differences in benefits between men and women are even more marked than the
differences in eligibility patterns. The reason is that the smaller number
of years that women are in the labor market lowers their own Social Security
benefit levels after retirement. The projected gap is exacerbated by the
fact that across the board, women's prime-age indexed earnings are much lower
than men's. For instance, among the fully insured group, wives' average lifetime
pay was only about 42 percent of that of married men, and nonmarried women
earned only 60 percent as much as nonmarried men. The calculations also show
that if fully insured married women kept working to age 65 with earnings along
the same trajectory, they would have a PIA worth only half that of married
men; for nonmarried women, the PIA would be 72 percent of that of nonmarried
men.

The data in Table 1 show that 70 percent of married and 78 percent of nonmarried
women on the verge of retirement were fully insured for Social Security benefits
on the basis of their own record. That level might be expected to increase
in the future as women spend more years working. Nonetheless, an indication
that this will be slow to happen is that the typical woman who is ineligible
for benefits is rather far from fully qualifying for benefits on her own.
In the HRS, for example, the median number of quarters of coverage for both
married and nonmarried ineligible women was about 18. Since a worker can
earn a maximum of four QCs per year, the median ineligible woman would need
to work at least 5 1/2 years to meet the 40 QC eligibility criterion.

Of course, a median statistic cannot identify how many people might be "close"
to meeting the eligibility criterion. For instance, a median of 18 could
imply either that all women had 18 QCs, or that most women were either at
zero or 39 QCs. To explore this issue further, we looked at the full distribution
of QCs for ineligible women (see Chart 1). Among the 30 percent of married
women (22 percent of the nonmarried women) who were ineligible on their own,
there appears to be no particular clumping: that is, the QC distribution appears
relatively uniform. Among the ineligible, about half would have to work 20
or more quarters (5 or more years) to become eligible.[n14]
What these data confirm, then, is that small increases in the number of years
women worked would not dramatically boost their eligibility for Social Security
benefits based on their own work records.

For women who are fully insured, a further question arises regarding how
increases in earnings might translate into additional Social Security benefits.
A complicating factor is that for married women, the answer depends not only
on their own earnings history but also on the size of their PIA relative to
their husband's, since a working wife receives no incremental benefit as a
direct result of her own work history until her PIA exceeds half her husband's
PIA.

The pattern of wives' PIA relative to that of their husband among the fully
insured is shown in Chart 2. Two-thirds of fully insured wives have a PIA
ratio greater than one-half and hence are eligible for higher benefits on
their own record than on their spouse's. The remaining third is eligible for
higher benefits based on the spouse's work history.[n15]

This fraction may decline over time if women's earnings continue to rise
relative to men's. The extent to which that occurs depends on the share of
women for whom the PIA ratio is close to one-half. Chart 2 shows that about
14 percent of all fully insured women, or fewer than half of fully insured
women whose PIA is less than half their husband's, have a PIA ratio between
0.4 and 0.5. Therefore, unless future earnings gains for women are quite
large, relatively few women will have their benefit levels determined on the
basis of their own records in the near future.[n16]

Our assessment may still be too optimistic regarding women's ability to collect
benefits based solely on their own work histories. The reason is that widows
are entitled to receive benefits that depend on their husbands' full PIA rather
than just half, as in the case of the (living) spouse benefit. Chart 2 shows
that fewer than 15 percent of the HRS women have a PIA ratio that is greater
than unity. In the case of a married couple with both members turning 65 on
the same day, the life expectancy of the wife is 4 years longer than for her
husband (19 versus 15 years). If they both lived as long as expected, the
wife would spend at least 20 percent of her remaining years collecting benefits
based on her husband's earnings rather than on her own. Since relatively
few women are near the threshold PIA ratio of unity, wage gains for women
are unlikely to dramatically alter that pattern in the near future.

Notes

Philip Levine is an Associate Professor of Economics at Wellesley
College, an NBER Research Associate, and a faculty affiliate at the Joint
Center for Research on Poverty.

Olivia S. Mitchell is the International Foundation of Employee Benefit
Plans Professor of Insurance and Risk Management and the Executive Director
of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School of the University of
Pennsylvania. She is also an NBER Research Associate and a co-Principal Investigator
of the AHEAD/Health and Retirement Study Project at the University of Michigan.

John W.R. Phillips is a labor economist in the Social Security Administration's
Office of Policy, Office of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, Division
of Policy Evaluation.

1. Here we can only summarize coverage, eligibility, and
benefit rules under the U.S. Social Security program; additional detail is
available on the SSA Web page at www.ssa.gov, or see Myers (1993) and SSA
(1998).

2. Additional criteria are required to be "disability
insured" under the system; a discussion of those benefits is beyond the
scope of this article.

3. Earnings are indexed using the SSA average covered earnings
series to age 60; cost-of-living adjustments are applied from age 60 to the
retirement year.

4. Benefits are equal to 90 percent of AIME up to a first
tier of indexed pay, with an additional 32 percent of AIME up to a second
tier of pay, and a third 15 percent of AIME paid above that. The value of
the AIME tiers is indexed over time; see www.ssa.gov for more detail.

5. A spouse of a fully insured retired or disabled worker
is entitled to 50 percent of the worker's PIA at age 65; benefits are reduced
for younger ages (SSA 1998).

6. Because some working
wives will have paid Social Security payroll taxes without gaining any additional
benefit above what they could receive on the basis of their husband's work
history, the system has been seen as levying a substantial implicit tax on
working women (McCaffery 1997).

7. Benefits are capped if the deceased claimed benefits
before age 65. As with spousal benefits, divorced women can qualify for benefits
as a surviving divorced wife. For more detail on survivor benefits, see SSA
(1998).

8. Here we use only
the baseline HRS survey; subsequent waves have been fielded biennially, most
recently in 2000. For a description of the HRS data set including conditions
of use, see Mitchell, Olson, and Steinmeier (2000) or www.umich.edu/~hrsahead.

9. Social Security benefit estimates and earnings histories
are required for the analysis, so respondents lacking those data are excluded.
We have no evidence that this biases results. See Levine, Mitchell, and Phillips
(1999) for further discussion.

10. Creation of variables is described in Mitchell, Olson,
and Steinrneier (2000).

11. All reported statistics (except where noted) represent
the median 10 percent, calculated by taking the mean value for respondents
in the 45th to 55th percentiles to avoid the potential impact of bunching
at particular round numbers.

12. One shortcoming of the HRS data is that they do not
permit identification of spousal benefits for currently divorced people who
had previously been married for at least 1O years. See Butrica, Iams, and
Sandell (1999) for a discussion of the importance of data on couples in calculating
Social Security benefits.

13. Age-65 benefits are derived by projecting smoothed
and indexed pre-1992 annual real earnings to age 65 and subsequently calculating
AIME and PIA based on the respondent's "completed" earnings history
(for detail see Mitchell, Olson, and Steinmeier 2000).

14. This finding is not restricted to the younger members
of this sample; results are similar when we split the sample for those ages
51-55 and 56-61.

15. This includes women whose spouses had no covered earnings
because their job was not covered by Social Security.

16. Butrica, Iams, and Sandell (1999) evaluate potential
eligibility for own retirement benefits among women born from 1931 to 1960
using a different empirical approach, and they conclude that women's eligibility
rises from around 70 percent for the older cohort to nearly 100 percent for
the more recent cohort. They also note that as the gap between men's and
women's earnings narrows over time, more women will claim their own retirement
benefits as opposed to spousal benefits. To put all of these findings in
perspective, we have simulated how much a fully insured older woman's benefits
might grow if she worked an additional year. In the HRS sample, an additional
year of work at the rate of pay consistent with prior earnings translates
into only a tiny benefit increase at the margin, on the order of 1 percent
of average earnings. That is a small number, equivalent to about 2.5 percent
of PIA or about $120 in additional Social Security benefits per year for life,
and it is consistent with the results reported by Levine, Mitchell, and Phillips
(1999). The benefit increase is so small in part because many women always
receive more as a spouse, even though they work additional years. Further,
even for those who have a PIA ratio of 100 percent or more, the nonlinear
benefit formula means that more work years do relatively little to improve
benefits. In other words, additional years of work and longer earnings records
do boost Social Security eligibility and benefit levels but by relatively
small amounts for women with the types of labor force patterns seen in the
HRS.

References

Briceland-Betts, Deborah. 1997. Testimony of the Executive Director, Older
Women's League, before the Subcommittee on Social Security of the House Committee
on Ways and Means, The Future of Social Securityfor this Generation and
the Next. May 22.